FALL RIVER — A judge has denied Aaron Hernandez’s motion dismiss murder and firearm charges stemming from the June 2013 homicide of Odin Lloyd.

Last month, Hernandez’s lawyers said in court documents that prosecutors had not shown probable cause to sustain the murder charge against Hernandez, 24, because they had shown only that Hernandez was present when Lloyd, 27, was killed in the North Attleborough Industrial Park. The prosecution had also shown no evidence that Hernandez killed, or had a motive to kill, Lloyd, defense lawyers said.

However, Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh said in a decision she released Wednesday that probable cause, and a defendant’s guilt, can be established by circumstantial evidence. Garsh also said prosecutors do not need to prove a motive to secure a murder conviction.

“Accordingly, the failure of the grand jury to hear evidence that would answer the questions, ‘Who shot Lloyd? — Hernandez, Wallace or Ortiz?’ — and ‘What happened in the minutes before he was shot?’ does not require, as Hernandez argues, that the murder indictment be dismissed,” Garsh wrote.

The grand jury, Garsh also said, heard “sufficient evidence” to establish probable cause that Hernandez “intentionally participated in some meaningful way” in Lloyd’s death on June 17, 2013.

Prosecutors alleged that Hernandez, the former New England Patriots’ tight end, orchestrated Lloyd’s murder after a disagreement the pair had at a Boston nightclub two days before the murder.

Prosecutors said Hernandez called two associates — Ernest Wallace, 45, and Carlos Ortiz, 27, — to meet him in North Attleborough, and that they picked up Lloyd at his Dorchester residence and drove him to the industrial park, where he was shot five times with a .45-caliber handgun.

Hernandez’s lawyers had also moved to dismiss an unlawful possession of a firearm, partially on the grounds that prosecutors presented improper evidence to the grand jury of Hernandez’s alleged prior bad acts that included a February 2013 shooting in Florida, a May 2013 altercation at a Providence nightclub, a 2009 shooting in Florida, and a photograph appearing to show Hernandez, while he was in college, holding a Glock handgun in front of a mirror.

Garsh said that while some of that evidence may not be suitable for trial, prosecutors did not impair the grand jury’s integrity by presenting that information.

“After reading all the grand jury transcripts, the court has a firm belief that the grand jury would have returned the indictments it did even if the disputed items of evidence had not been presented,” Garsh wrote.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Jan. 9 in Hernandez’s Bristol County murder case. He is also charged with two counts of murder stemming from an August 2012 drive-by shooting in Boston that left two men dead.

Page 2 of 2 - Hernandez is scheduled to appear next in Fall River Superior Court on Aug. 11 for a motion hearing. His defense lawyers have indicated that they intend to file a motion to change the venue of the Bristol County trial.